I watched the one about the waterslide (at Schlitterbahn) that decapitated a 10 year old kid in front of two women. It was the tallest waterslide, was built in like 1/3rd of time, and the guys who built it had never made a waterslide before. Their safety testing was trial and error, which showed the raft fly off the ride at the first hill multiple times. Their solution was to put a net with hoop supports, which is what cut the kid's head off.
The only positive was that the kid was the son of a Kansas Republican, and Republicans only care about safety hazards when it affects them directly, so there actually were consequences.
Still an awful thing though. I live in KC and remember that news.
I also remember drying through Kansas and seeing the freakishly tall slide.
Disneyland had a death due to poor management at one point, probably others. The one I’m referencing the Columbia on the Rivers of America. It’s not in the story, but my recollection was that it was a new manager (who shadow each attraction for a day or two when they’re promoted) that directed the cast to tie down when it was going too fast. The momentum ripped up the cleat which practically amputated the leg of the cast member and flew into a guest’s face, killing them.
Just flexing my useless Disney info, but kinda making the point that the ship itself was well built/designed, but management was shit.
Don't forget they are staffed by one teenager when the operating manual calls for 2 adults and a supervisor.
I don't ride amusement park rides for exactly that reason. The motion and speed and such don't bother me, and it's not that I get dizzy or nauseous or anything. It's that I'm hyper-aware of the fact that all it would take to kill me is for one little mechanical part to fail or be incorrectly installed.
I actually fixate on specific parts - the whole time the ride's going, I'm looking around and thinking, "If that pin shears, I'm dead. If that bolt wasn't tightened down, I'm dead. If that flange twists, I'm dead."
There's nothing even vaguely fun about that.
Even if you were to ride an amusement park rollercoaster every single day for the rest of your life, you would be a couple magnitudes more likely to die on the car ride to or back from the park than by a malfunction of the attraction. Most malfunctions will result on the car stopping on an horizontal section then getting evacuated on foot, and that would be scary but you wouldn't be in any danger. You are in greater danger of harm or death stepping into a bathtub for a shower than on a rollercoaster cart riding at 120 km/h and pulling some Gs. Humans suck at intuitively assessing risk.
Yes - I know all of that. And it doesn't make the slightest difference.
I take it you don't go near cars or other vehicles either, then? Lol
I can manage cars, but I have a sort of mental block I've had to adopt to stop myself thinking about tires blowing out. It helps that I can't see them.
I generally only ride elevators if it's more floors than I can comfortably climb stairs, and I don't like them. Given the opportunity, I always take the stairs. And I spend a lot of my time on elevators specifically trying not to think about the arrangement of pulleys and cables that's the only thing standing between me and death. Again though, it helps that I can't actually see them.
Airplanes are sort of odd, because they don't much scare me. I think the whole thing is so complex and foreign that I can't get a firm idea of what specifically could fail, so I don't have any specific thing on which to focus the fear. I dunno - I just know that they don't scare me.
Trains are a bit unsettling though, I guess because wheels and rails are something on which I can and thus do focus. It's va fairly distant rhing though, and thinking about it is the exception rather than the rule.
And so on...
